Flight of Brothers

by Jonathan Baumbach

  I took the idea of giving advice seriously, not asked for it very often, and I didn’t want to misinform her. On the other hand, I was not eager to be Eva’s someone else. I liked her and she was always very neatly turned out and though somewhat scrawny, she was reasonably attractive. I can’t explain it so much as to say that she reminded me of my mother.

  “I would wait another week,” I said, “before calling.”

  “We used to see each other every other day,” she said. “Sometimes more often than that.”

  We were on the fourth block by now. “Uh huh,” I said.

  “Waiting two weeks took extreme patience.”

  “I see.” I said.

  “He likes reassurance,” she said. “He may be thinking that I prefer the mythical someone else to him. What would you think if you were in his shoes?”

  I tried to imagine myself in his position but came up blank. “I don’t know,” I said. It was getting cold and I was sorry I didn’t have a heavier coat. “Could we head back,” I said.

  “We haven’t gone very far,” she said. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  I wondered which question she was referring to. “If I wanted to hear from you,” I said, “I would be reassured by a call. I don’t know his state of mind. I don’t know this man at all.”

  “He’s not very complicated,” she said. We turned around and headed back toward our building.

  Much of our walk back was in silence. “You’ve been helpful,” she said, when we got within a block of our street. I thought she really meant you’ve been no help at all but was too polite to say so.

  She shook my hand warmly at the door to her apartment and leaned her head toward me, which, in a rash of shame, I politely ignored.

  Afterward, back in my apartment, I felt some regret for my coldness. She was not my mother nor was she even much like her. She was my friend and neighbor. I felt grateful for her attention.

  The next day, I knocked at her door, which she took some time to respond to. When she opened the door, she opened it barely a crack. “I have company,” she said. “You see your advice worked.”

  “Is it him?” I whispered.

  “It’s him,” she said.

  “I’m glad for you,” I said.

  “I’d rather spend the time with you.”

  “Not really,” I said. “Yesterday this was the answer to your fondest wishes.”

  “Times change,” she said. “When he leaves, we can go for another walk.”

  I went back to my apartment, nonplussed by her attitude, distrusting her words.

  A little more than an hour later, she knocked at my door. “He’s gone,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I’m not. I asked him to leave. He wants to get back together on our old terms. I told him I’d have to think it over. Things have changed as I’ve indicated to you.”

  “It’s hard for me to believe that a single day could have changed your attitude toward him.”

  “It’s two weeks and a day,” she said, “a time in which I matured. Should we take our walk?”

  I put on my coat, the heavier one this time, and we went out, though I was uneasy with her new stance. I was actually more comfortable being asked for advice.

  This was a walk without an agenda and we made small talk. She didn’t seem disposed to talk about her out-of-favor former steady. At least right away. We walked apart, though every once in a while she would take hold of my arm in a proprietary way. I didn’t encourage this minor intimacy, which I could tell she was aware of. “What I’m going to do,” she said, measuring her words, “is give Ron a short trial period and see how it works out.”

  “That sounds wise,” I said.

  She seemed less pleased with me at the conclusion of this walk.

  There had been an elderly woman, named, Dorothy, who assisted Dr. Klotzman, but one day she was replaced by a girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. The girl introduced herself in a solemn manner. “My name is Carol,” she said. “I’ll be keeping your appointment schedule.”

  I mentioned that I had met the replacement to Klotzman. “What happened to Dorothy?” I asked.

  “Dorothy retired,” he said. “In any event, she was getting forgetful. Don’t let Carol’s looks deceive you. She’s sharp as a tack. Don’t you think she spruces up the office?”

  “I suppose,” I said. “I liked Dorothy.”

  “We all liked Dorothy,” he said. “Carol, as you’ll notice, brings something else.”

  That was the extent of our conversation about what seemed a radical change in office ambience.

  Whenever I entered the office I was continually taken aback by Carol’s presence in Dorothy’s place.

  The last few sessions had focused on Eva and my apparent confusion at the message she was sending.

  “Why were you so surprised by the shift in her response to you?” Klotzman asked him. “Isn’t it clear?”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “She felt you were rejecting her. Don’t you see that?”

  “I didn’t reject her or not reject her,” I said. “She already has a boyfriend. I didn’t want to interfere.”

  “You’re being dense,” Klotzman said. “From all indications she wanted you to interfere. She told you, didn’t she, that she had grown disappointed with this boyfriend.”

  “I see what your saying,” I said. “I felt it wasn’t any of my business.”

  “And she felt rejected by your standoffishness. What concerns us here is, what do you want from this relationship?”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said. “Wanting always gets me into trouble. In any event, I messed things up.”

  “I suppose you did,” he said, “though I think that comes from not letting yourself have anything.”

  This seemed a productive session, though when I got home I couldn’t define why.

  I hadn’t thought about Eva when three days later, I ran into Eva in front of our building. She was coming in as I was going out. We nodded to each other like relative strangers. I took a longish walk by myself to clear my head.

  The next day or the day after that she knocked at my door. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you,” she said.

  “I could say the same,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Ron and I have split up,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “That’s all right. It was my decision. So. I’m free to take a walk with you again one of these days. I can’t stand around and talk. I just wanted to let you know.”

  I made some innocuous remark and she returned to her apartment.

  I meant to tell Klotzman about this encounter but he was absent on the occasion of our next visit and I ended up talking to Carol.

  “The reason I took this job,” she told me, “was that when I finished my training I’d like to be a therapist myself.”

  Her assertion surprised me but I made an encouraging remark in exchange.

  “I had always wondered why anyone would want to be a therapist,” I said, thinking out loud.

  “If you feel you have the gift,” she said, “it’s an obligation.”

  “Do you ever sit in for Dr. Klotzman?” I asked.

  “I never have,” she said. “Would you like me to, Melvin?”

  I thanked her, said another time, and backed out of the office. I wasn’t prepared to share my secrets with this young woman.

  “It’s probably not a good idea,” she called after me. “I have another year of training to complete.”

  “Why does anyone want to become a therapist?” I asked Eva on one of our walks.

  “There was a time I wanted to be a therapist,” Eva said, “but I realized I didn’t have the gift and I gave it up.”

  “How do you know whether you have the gift or not?” I asked. “And what does it mean?”

  “You just know,” she said, brushing off my question.

  “And you knew you didn�
��t have it.”

  She shrugged. “Yes and no. Perhaps I made a mistake. I sometimes wonder about that. I made my decision on what I thought I knew about myself. It’s not an exact science.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” I said. “Well, I know I don’t have whatever gift is required nor do I have the inclination.”

  “And so you’re not a therapist.”

  “That’s right. I’m a writer, or like to think I am, and you need a gift for that too.”

  “I think we’re using the word in two different senses,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I didn’t what to acknowledge it so I merely nodded.

  “The gifted therapist can read his patients,” she said.

  “And if he can’t, he shouldn’t be a therapist?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said. “As with all things there are degrees. Yes, I suppose if he or she can’t read his patients, he or she shouldn’t be a therapist.”

  “I don’t think Dr. Klotzman reads me very well,” I said.

  She thought about it, played with the idea as we walked.

  “He might read you better than you know.”

  “He might,” I acknowledged, though I didn’t really believe it.

  During my next session with Klotzman, I asked him if he thought he had a gift as a therapist. Was it his gift that convinced him to be a therapist?

  “Gift, schmift,” Klotzman said. “I believe in method. The method is the true gift. I’m a scientist not a sorcerer.”

  I was willing to let the subject drop. So the gift school was only one way of perceiving the problem.

  “I’m a trained analyst,” Klotzman said, unwilling to let the subject die. “Not a magician.”

  Did that explain anything? I wondered. He seemed obsessed on the issue. “What made you want to be a therapist?” I asked him.

  “Aside from wanting to help people, I’ve always been fascinated by the varieties of neurosis. Does that answer your question?”

  Two men calling themselves detectives came to my door the next day which was a surprise though not unexpected. A childhood friend of mine had been murdered in his own house and they had come to ask me questions. I hadn’t seen this former friend in at least five years—more enemy these days than friend, we had once been like brothers—which is what I told the two men. “That’s odd,” the smaller of the two said, “your name is in his address book.”

  The bigger man asked, “Where were you two nights ago between eight and twelve”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose I was at home.”

  “Do you have any witnesses?” the other asked.

  “I live alone,” I said.

  “That’s unlucky for you,” the small one said. “We may ask you to come down to the station to stand in a lineup.”

  “I told you I haven’t seen this man in a very long time. We were childhood friends. We moved in very different circles.”

  “If you haven’t seen him, how do you know what circles he moved in?” the small one asked.

  How did I know? “His name has been in the paper from time to time. Wasn’t he accused of a ponzi scheme? He was always looking for devious ways to make money.”

  “Is that why you killed him?” the big man said, threw it at me. “Didn’t he date your former wife?” He looked at his notes.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I don’t go around killing people for making money illegally. Or for dating my former wife, which I didn’t know.”

  This went on for a while, then the two men got up, thanked me for my time and left. “Don’t go anywhere,” the small man said.

  I was shaking when they were gone and I thought I’d call Klotzman and ask for a special session. I needed someone who understood me to talk to. And what was my name doing in Henry Kleiburn’s address book? It must have been a very old address book. And when and how did he get together with my former wife? Henry had a way of taking what belonged to other people. He was an inveterate thief.

  I recited my grievances against Henry to Klotzman, but first I told him about our childhood friendship. “Henry was my oldest and closest friend. For a period, from about six to ten we were virtually inseparable or so memory would have it. Henry’s house was across the street from mine and we would spend as much or more time in the other’s house as in our own. I remember preferring his house. His parents were more permissive and there was more to eat. The refrigerator was always crowded with the kind of junk foods kids like and we were never reprimanded there for helping ourselves. It was hard to imagine why we spent any time in my house at all, but for his own reasons Henry liked being there. My mother doted on him, wanted me to be more like him, which must have made me resentful.”

  “Maybe that was the beginning of the falling out,” Klotzman said.

  “We were always very competitive, grades, games—the main game was stoop ball when we were small—and we were fairly evenly matched, though Henry usually came out on top in the long run. Even then, even in games like stoop ball, he tended to cheat in small ways. When I won a game he would sulk and not talk to me, as if I were the one who had cheated. To keep his friendship sometimes I had to let him win or at least try not to care about losing.”

  “It could be that the falling out was an accumulation of incidents,” Klotzman said. “Resentments build up.”

  “We used to steal things, little things, from five and dime stores and one time I got caught and I was taken to the police station and my parents were called.”

  “Henry acted innocent, though he had been the instigator. He was just better at it than I was, but he never admitted to my parents that he was also shop lifting. There were incidents like this that finally got me to stop seeing him. His whole life has been seizing the main chance and now someone has killed him.”

  “But it wasn’t you.”

  I said nothing for a moment, impaled by guilt. Was it possible that I could have killed him and blocked out the episode?. “I don’t think it was me,” I said.

  “You’re not sure?”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “I haven’t seen Henry in over five years.”

  “You’ve certainly never mentioned his name here before. Why were you so hesitant in claiming your innocence?”

  I shrugged, abashed.

  “Melvin,” he said, “we’ve talked about this again and again. You have to distinguish the real from the imaginary. Your free-floating guilt is caused by a confusion of the two. You had nothing to do with Henry’s murder.”

  “That’s not what the police think,” I said

  “Neither of us know what the police think.”

  “Then why did they come to my house?” I asked.

  “Why? They might have gone through all the names in Henry’s address book. I have no idea. In any event, you and I know they had it wrong. Don’t we?”

  I felt slightly better after this session but the feeling only lasted until I got home and had a chance to brood again. A few nights later I had a dream about being in a police lineup where all the potential suspects looked something like me. I wondered how the old woman making the identification could tell the difference among us.

  “Which one of these reprobates was it?” the policeman holding the pointer asked. “Candidate number one, candidate, number two, candidate, number three, candidate number four or candidate number five?”

  She rested her chin on her hand, didn’t seem to be looking at any of us. I was in the third and most conspicuous position.

  “He might have been wearing some kind of mask,” she said.

  Masks were brought out and we were all fitted with masks that covered our eyes.

  “No,” she said. “No masks.”

  The masks were removed. The room looked lighter than it had before.

  “It’s either one or five,” she said, after a moment, “though it could be three.”

  “It could be three, couldn’t it?” the policeman said.

  The woman looked confused. �
�It could be three,” she repeated reluctantly.

  What about one or five I wanted to say, they were her first choices, but the policeman had settled on me. I was still protesting in my dreams when I woke.

  I kept waiting to be called to the police station for a lineup, but it didn’t happen, at least it hadn’t happened. I tried not to think about it, to think about anything else, but it was the only thing on my mind.

  I had another dream in which I was the only one in a lineup for identification. The others hadn’t shown up, had been delayed. It didn’t seem any less fair than anything else. Oddly, the woman making the identification, a different old woman, said it wasn’t me, which made the policeman angry. He refused to accept her non-identification. “Who else could it be?” he asked.

  And then there was the third version of the dream in which two of the candidates were very short, virtual midgets, and two exceptionally tall, leaving me in the middle, a stand-out at medium height. Who else could it be? I thought. The room was silent for the longest time.

  I woke from these dreams outraged at the manipulative nature of the police, who for no reason I understood had it in for me. What I had ever done to them?

  “Do you believe that dreams are prescient?” I asked Eva, on one of our walks.

  “I used not to,” she said.

  “What changed your mind?”

  She squeezed my arm. “The bitter lessons of experience,” she said.

  I asked her to be more explicit. “What experiences are you referring to?”